And now for something completely different – saving capitalism for/from the capitaists

Well, so much for my personal goal of one blog posting per day, come rain come shine.  I still like the idea but the flesh is so unwilling.  I’m prompted today though by a recent fun post sent to me by a friend from the fakestevejobs blog.

First – take a minute to read this gem.

The problem we have all seen is that western businesses are so focussed on short-term financial results that we fail miserably in longer-term planning and investments.   One place I worked made assembly robots – big expensive durable goods.  Before the and of any financial year – everything was focused on making sales.  All the test/development units, all the spare-parts, all the demo units – everything had to be cleared out in a giant fire sale to boost the end-of-year figures and make us look good.  Great – no worry that for the first two months of the coming financial year there is nothing to sell (all the parts kits having been raided for the fire sale).  Now the only hope of recovery would be another fire sale at the end of the next financial year, so the cycle continues.  Robbing Peter to pay Paul – or rather robbing Paul’s child to pay Paul.  Sounds familiar – no?

Wherever you look, people bemoan the short-sightedness of other peoples decisions – yet feel compelled to do the same thing themselves.  Anyone brave enough to buck the system and take this bad news on the chin would be killed by the market place.  They wouldn’t live long enough to show the wisdom of long term planning and execution.  This sucks bottom – yo. (I’ve been watching “The Wire” – highly recommended).

The miracle of electronic stock trading is only encouraging this.  When regular folks can execute stock trades of any size for $10 or so in an instant – no wonder companies are deadly afraid of any bad news.  And not just day traders (assuming there are any of these left standing), large institution investors too act second by second looking to squeeze some advantage from whatever hits the news wire.   You can’t blame them – it’s the system.

My solution (drum roll, please).
Limit stock trading to an enrolment period open one week every five years.

I haven’t worked out the mechanics of this – what to do with all the stock-brokers etc for the other 250 odd weeks – maybe stagger the open weeks by industry or alphabetically or something, although this create difficulties in selling one investment before buying another etc. if they are not in the same enrolment window.  Hmmmm.

Oh well – better minds are needed to figure out the mechanics of it all.  I think I’ve done enough for my Nobel prize.  I can always share it with someone else – as the “dude” says in the Big Labowski – this might put me in a whole new tax bracket etc…